16bit Sensation: Another Layer

Episode 7

For all its criss-crossing commentary, 16bit Sensation: Another Layer is still firmly a romanticized representation of game development. Its assessments ring a bit more fair than others might, given that its story was partially put together by people working on these games at the times depicted. Artists like Misato Mitsumi and Tatsuki Amazuyu have a lot of lasting love for what they created and the work they put into doing so, as well as how that art drew from the past and impacted the future. Passion in projects, commercial or otherwise, is an invaluable thing. So even as Another Layer is layering monologue about how much fun everyone is having over a montage that fades into footage of the Alcohol Soft staff sleeping in their office, there's an understanding about that. This crew was pushed into this by a pretty unideal situation, so why not strive to find joy in this necessitated act of creation?

The idea of appreciation for an art form, specifically bishoujo visual novels, also carries over into the softer resolution of the show's most brutal commentary from last week. This reveals that Ichigaya had a genuine interest and belief in the ability to adapt Alcohol Soft's game for a wider audience, scamming billions of yen. However, in doing so, he was a functional narrative note. It tracks since, as I noted last week, Ichigaya's predictions of these games as lucrative adaptational sources were right on the (massively misappropriated) money. His ultimate role is instilling in Masaru the value for the artists and creators actually making his games, which so few real-life executives have. He still has to beg them to take him back, as he should.

These are the most critical takes I can have on the points where 16bit Sensation is being perhaps too uncritical. It might simply be that Mitsumi and Amazuyu are too close to the creation process, and it's still fair for the sheer amount of insight and enthusiasm this story displays in extolling its focal art form. And it's also the hardest I can be because the rest of this episode of Another Layer is a wall-to-wall delight. I don't know how successful the ambitious new game that Konoha's spearheading will be, but at least when you put her back in the center of her show for an episode, she can make some true magic happen.

After half a season of teasing the possibilities, this episode shows Konoha's full abilities, bringing her 2023 otaku-appeal sensibilities to the humbler days of the 1990s. One surprisingly simple point is Another Layer's take on the idea of the artistic revolutionary: The others are wowed by Konoha's art not simply out of a narrative necessity for it to be the most amazing, life-changing picture of an anime girl they've ever seen; this 200-layer Photoshop/Clip Studio combo composition is indeed several orders of magnitude technically more advanced than anything they've glimpsed. No wonder it's enough to get Kaori to open her eyes finally. It allows this anime to divulge more historical context as it follows this. That is, how the art in these sorts of games progressed the way it did alongside the technological restrictions of the era. This is true for virtually any art form, like movies and music. But here, the show cites specific, relevant specs that explain why various stylistic shortcuts had to be taken on the bishoujo CGs of the past. It then blows through them anyway with, what else, the power of the PC-98.

Mamoru stacking a bunch of 9821s together to create a rudimentary multi-core processor is a funny joke, sure. Still, it's also a plot-relevant point in the grander scheme of Another Layer. Even the least computer-literate can guess that spurring technology on a quantum leap by the standards of 1999 will probably have history-rewriting ramifications. That's made clear by the end of this episode, but even before that, heads are being cocked at the actual possibilities of Konoha's approach. Her pushing for a bishoujo VN that's hundreds of hours long, with dozens of marketable characters slapped across oodles of tie-in merch, fits with the otaku-centric marketplace we know and love today. But in trying to invoke that culture over two decades early, it's possible that being ahead of her time might backfire. It mixes 16bit Sensation's combination of nostalgia and modern nerdy reverence into a fascinating cocktail of commentary that only dorks who lived through these eras could calculate.

Through it all, Konoha remains just a bit too dense to recognize these potential paradoxes herself and all the more lovable for it. She's a doofus who can't even stick to her time-travel obfuscating backstory for more than a sentence. But like her co-workers, she convinces them to accompany her on her do-or-die project. She wins the audience over through sheer enthusiasm. How that will work out for her is more up in the air by this episode's cliffhanger ending. But like the best creators of any era who led a revolution into the next, by god is Konoha trying.

Rating:

Bonus Bits:

• This episode's first major otaku shout-out comes from the future, respective to 1999, but still the past as far as we're concerned. Konoha reveals herself as a true child of 2010's anime by playing Connect to psych herself up in a moment that had me pausing the episode because I was laughing so hard. Puella Magi Madoka Magica is one of the most historically significant anime of the era, as well as one whose involvement with Gen Urobuchi and Nitroplus tethers it inexorably to the Visual Novel market. You think Konoha has played Saya no Uta?
• Many of this episode's other references continue that theme of the present meeting past. Among Konoha's many, many ideas for advancements is the implementation of Live2D. Like Madoka, this animation software and its accompanying style also became prominent in the 2010's. It's now inescapable in presenting modern otaku media like mobile games and VTubers. It would also, as mentioned in the show, be fundamentally unachievable with 1999-era technology, making Mamoru's style-specific workaround even more uncannily amusing.
• Surprise! Konoha doesn't end up time-traveling again by the end of this episode. Instead, it's Mamoru, and he doesn't go forward to another point in the future but back to the distant past. His method of doing so is a game titled "Gogo no Tenshi-tachi", a pretty obvious take-off on JAST's Tenshi-tachi no Gogo. An influential 1985 bishoujo title for the PC-88, this is notably the first instance of one of Another Layer's historically significant time-travel games not bearing an actual real-world title and cover art. Presumably, this is down to some rights/licensing issue, but maybe we'll find out more depending on how much history the series delves into next week.

16bit Sensation: Another Layer is currently streaming on Crunchyroll.

Chris knows many of these VN game characters from the fighting games they popped up in. You can catch him meditating on any amount of game, anime, and manga subjects over on his blog, as well as posting too many screencaps of them as long as Twitter allows.